


Calcine

by scy



Category: Battlestar Galactica
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-01
Updated: 2010-01-01
Packaged: 2017-10-05 14:15:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 547
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/42609
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scy/pseuds/scy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Leoben knows what is to be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Calcine

**Author's Note:**

> the_grynne drabbled, and several things occurred to me. _To heat to a high temperature below the melting or fusing point, causing loss of moisture, driving off volatile matter._

When he first saw her, Leoben was struck by Starbuck's beauty, and her wounds. She strode into his cell with a limp, but tried to pretend it didn't matter that she was so obviously weak. Her objective was clear, she had been sent to learn anything she could by whatever means necessary, and he had been prepared for the encounter to be fatal from the instant he saw it become a moment along his path. In every way, Starbuck lived up to his expectations, and even surpassed them, but she was a front, a part of someone else that was kept back, and hidden. In that first meeting, through blood and broken bones, Leoben met Kara.

Their disagreements were what he had prepared for, and the responses forceful exclamations that he appreciated and returned. Kara smirked and snarled, and denied that anyone not born of a woman's womb could know God. Leoben smiled, bled, and told her that she would be the one to find the very place that had been humanity's first home. If she did that, took his gift, then was it all not the work of some greater power? Leoben thought so, as he was exposed to vacuum and died. It had been worth it, to see her, hear her voice, and tell her some of what he knew, even if she couldn't bring herself to believe it yet.

There was war again, neither side truly gaining an advantage, and then the humans thought that escape meant they had found peace. They learned differently as Centurions marched through the streets, and Leoben slipped away from the scene of conquest on an errand of his own.

Leoben found Kara, when others might have broken her spirit for their own ends. He knew that some plans would not work out, even though they had been calculated and all logic dictated they would succeed. What he had seen did not always make sense, but it had not been programmed by fallible hands, destiny would come and sweep every doubt away, and Leoben stood in that river, let it wash over him every second of each day.

But Starbuck did not begin in water and would not be sheared away by its force alone. She came out of conflict, anger was a heat that burned clean. Starbuck had been created before she thought to name herself ahead of what others expected her to be. So Leoben gave her fire, and cold, to let her choose, and each time she rose out of complacency to strike back, he died, and when he rose, saw another layer scoured away, until it was Kara who stepped forward that last time, and she who kissed and killed just as she gave Leoben an answer he had been waiting for.

Kara would never thank him for what he did, and Leoben didn't ask for her gratitude. Her love was what he wanted, and recognition of the parts of themselves that were matchless anywhere but together, that was enough for the present. The future held other things back until the time was right, and somewhere along that road, they would meet again, Leoben and Kara, and it would be nothing like it had ever been, and all that they were meant to be together.


End file.
